Notorious B.I.G.

In the grand Tumblr tradition of mashing up seemingly unrelated art forms (see also: the eternally relevant Slaughterhouse 90210) — and perhaps in tribute to the increasing overlap between the worlds of hip hop and high art — comes a delightful project called Fly Art. Billed as “an homage to the finer things in life: art and hip hop,” Gisella Velasco and Toni Potenciano’s Tumblr superimposes lyrics from the likes of Kanye West and Lauryn Hill on complementary artworks by Renaissance and Modernist masters alike. Click through to see some of our favorite juxtapositions from Fly Art, which we spotted via Beautiful/Decay.
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There’s just a week and a half left before the new Mad Men season rolls out, but in case the ’60s-style withdrawal is too much to bear, Ads Libitum has the graphic design beat covered. Run by David Redon, the Tumblr has been posting faux-aged ads starring pop culture figures from the last two decades since July 2013. Redon’s favorite subject is musicians, but the full site has a spot for Breaking Bad‘s Pollos Hermanos as well. Click through for thoroughly retro renditions of OutKast, Missy Elliott, Snoop Dogg, and more.
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Lyric videos have been all the rage on YouTube for years, with fans showing off their iMovie skills by placing fancy fonts over images of a musician while his or her song plays in sync. But designer Jay Roeder did something a little bit more artistic: he created illustrated images for the lyrics to Notorious B.I.G.’s classic track “Juicy” (spotted on Egotripland, via The Hairpin). Sure, there are a couple of missing lyrics (a hand-drawn n-word still makes one uncomfy, I suppose), but this homage to Biggie’s wordplay is still pretty great.
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Rapper (and Spring Breakers star) Gucci Mane briefly changed his name to “Guwop” yesterday, before reneging thanks to an immediate Twitter backlash from fans. It’s not the first time a rapper’s changed monikers mid-career, or even the most dubious choice of nickname — though “Guwop” is certainly up there. Plenty of MCs don’t seem particularly attached to their chosen stage names; in fact, some of them even switch it up multiple times. We’ve compiled a list of rap’s most high-profile name changes and the reasoning behind them, from the perfectly reasonable to the totally bizarre.
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Fifteen years ago yesterday, on March 9, 1997, Biggie Smalls passed away. In honor of his memory, Terry Urban and Dope Culture have created a tribute album, remixing and resampling the music from Lana Del Rey’s Born To Die with the lyrics from Biggie’s Ready To Die. And it’s pretty good! There’s something about Lana’s… Read More

What’s more surprising — that Hole have canceled a scheduled set at Australia’s Soundwave Festival because they were slated to open for Limp Bizkit, or that both bands still exist in 2011? Either way, this makes one more well-publicized feud for Courtney Love, who tweeted at the festival’s promoter, AJ Maddah, “What bloody flight of crazed fancy made you think we’d open for Limp Bizkit dude? No offense, that’s nuts.” (Lest you begin to feel some pity for Maddah, let it be known that he responded by calling her a “rotten twat.”) This Hole vs. Limp Bizkit beef, which could just as easily have happened in 1997, got us thinking about the many epic musician feuds that took place in the ’90s — a few of which did not even include Love. Reminisce with us after the jump.
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Few of us have the opportunity to get up close and personal with our heroes, but Montreal-based illustrator and tattoo artist JAHWAN gives us an idea of what the experience might be like. His incredibly detailed drawings of cultural icons, created with pencil, pen, and white Posca paint markers, are like black-and-white photographs come to life — every hair and wrinkle is defined. He also has fantastic taste in subjects, depicting everyone from Frank Sinatra and Jackie O. to Lou Reed and the Notorious B.I.G. Click through for a gallery of some of our favorite JAHWAN portraits, and then visit his Behance site to see more of his work.
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The hip-hop world and the culinary realm have always been closer than you might think. Maybe it’s just that food is a handy metaphorical tool for romantic conquest and desirability, or that the jump from eating sardines for dinner to sippin’ champagne when you’re thirsty (like Biggie proclaimed) is a universally understood shorthand for getting really, really rich, but good food and hip-hop lyrics have often gone hand in hand. Consider that the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight,” often thought to be the first cohesive hip-hop song, has a whole section devoted to a bad meal at a friend’s house (“The macaroni’s soggy, the peas are mushed/ And the chicken tastes like wood.”)

Perhaps because the new Kanye West and Jay-Z single is titled “H.A.M.” and there’s now an entire Tumblr dedicated to changing Yeezy lyrics into food-related rhymes, we got to thinking about what culinary tips we can pick up from rap songs. So, without further ado, a compendium of recipes and and cooking instructions culled from hip-hop lyrics.
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[Editor’s note: Flavorwire is counting down our most popular features of 2010. This post comes in at position number 8. It was originally published September 2, 2010.] If you’ve read a magazine in the past few years, you’ve probably encountered the fiction writer’s lament: America, they say, no longer has room for literature. Google is apparently rotting our brains. Flashing screens everywhere feed us a constant glut of infomercials, video games, Snooki’s hair poof — what literary figure can compete with that? But the decline of the printed word has seen the concurrent rise of a different kind of wordsmith: the rapper. The work of hip-hop artists might be collected on mixtapes instead of in weighty tomes, but in both games, lyrical dexterity and a nimble wit are key. To put this all in perspective, we’ve determined the 20th century literary doppelgangers of 10 top rappers.
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